Know Kalanithi Maran: Chennai's richest man

A bombshell dropped on June 6, 2011 when maverick businessman C Sivasankaran, better known as Siva, came to the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters in south Delhi and said that he had been forced to sell his telecom venture, Aircel, to Maxis in 2005 by the Maran brothers. Dayanidhi refuted the allegations and told reporters in Chennai that Siva was a billionaire and "nobody can force anyone to sell his business". Siva, he added, had put Aircel up for sale even before he became the telecom minister in May 2004. Still, in July 2011, Dayanidhi was dropped from the cabinet.

CBI, in its first information report filed in October 2011, alleged that Siva had got a call from Dayanidhi instructing him to "work with Maxis on the issue". Subsequently, it added, Siva met Kalanithi in Chennai on November 11, 2005. In December, Siva announced that he was selling Aircel to Maxis.

That wasn't the end of the matter. It came to light that Astro All Asia Networks, a company related to Maxis, had invested Rs 629 crore in Sun Direct, the DTH arm of the Sun group. This included a premium of Rs 549 crore. During this time, Kalanithi and his wife, Kaveri, were issued shares at par. For Astro's investment, Sun Direct had been assigned an enterprise value of between Rs 3,446 crore and Rs 4,039 crore by ENAM Securities. CBI was of the opinion that at that time Sun Direct's value was around Rs 400 crore. It was yet to start operations, and even Tata Sky, which had 50 per cent of the market, was valued at less - Rs 2,500 crore. In October 2011, Dayanidhi's home, also at Boat Club Road, was raided by CBI.